


KNEE DEEP

by plumcat



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Humor, M/M, Mindfuck, Roman Angst, Violence, hey kids u want some fuckin uhhhh emotional catharsis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:13:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25338916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumcat/pseuds/plumcat
Summary: Roman runs away. His family runs after him. A wacky-sad character study featuring DIY Halloween costumes, hostile-ish magical creatures, the coolest spaceship possibly ever, and Janus’ grand ventures into experimental French gastronomy.
Relationships: (tangentially), Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders/Deceit | Janus Sanders
Comments: 57
Kudos: 88





	1. ACT ONE

**Author's Note:**

> CW: Alcohol, drug use, food, swearing, physical violence, kind of a lot of blood, wack ass metaphysical nonsense
> 
> I really like this one. I hope you do too.
> 
> Special thanks to AJ and the rest of the discord squad for putting up with and encouraging all my ridiculous ideas <3

Roman is sitting on the back porch with a cigarette that he is trying very hard to like when Janus shows up. It’s been a while since Roman has last seen him but he’s unmistakable, though different— his hair, dyed pink and shaved around the sides and back, is the main thing, as well as the battered chunky sneakers that the old him would have sneered at.

That lazy gait is the same, though, and the way he carries himself: A bit bent over but not slouched, coiled, cautious, like a dog with its hackles raised. Filling a whole room without taking up very much space at all.

He sits down beside Roman and stretches out his legs and doesn't look at Roman, which is fine, because it’s not like Roman is looking at him either. The moon is a half-formed fingerprint, a pale smudge in the starless sky, and in a dark corner on the other side of the backyard, one of Roman’s teammates (Nate, maybe?) is vomiting his brains out into the fire pit.

Roman takes a tentative drag from his cigarette and, blessedly, does not start coughing again, though it’s a near thing. 

“Congrats on the big win,” Janus says after a few more moments of silence, punctuated only by the crickets chirping, the muffled laughter in the house behind him, and poor possibly-Nate’s distant retching. His voice is cool, almost entirely flat, like he’s imparting an unfortunate but ultimately forgettable bit of news.

Roman scowls at him. “What are you doing here?”

“Remy invited me,” he says, and then off the look Roman gives him, adds, crossly, “He  _ is _ my friend too, you know.

“Only when it’s convenient.”

Janus ignores this. “High school football,” he sing-songs. “Big fucking deal, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Roman says tersely. He knows he’s being riled up on purpose but he hates cigarette smoke and it’s so cold here, even in April (he couldn’t remember if Florida was ever this cold), and he’s a  _ little _ drunk, maybe, he did shots with Val earlier, before Janus sauntered in and ruined everything. “We made it to state. First time in five years.”

“I know,” Janus says, infuriatingly, unwaveringly, amused. “Despite my best efforts, I can’t entirely avoid hearing about it.”

“Organised sports are a microcosm of a corrupt society,” Roman recites, in his best imitation of Janus’ drawl, and though he’s a bit out of practice his efforts can’t be too terrible, judging from the way the other smiles, a little, unwilling but unbidden.

“See, you get it.” He pauses. “You did great. Everybody says so.”

“I  _ know _ ,” Roman says, unconsciously echoing. “I— I’m going to play in college, I think, well, I hope, Coach keeps saying I’m good enough but he always sort of—”

“Is that what you want?”

“I’m good at it,” says Roman, and something in Janus’ face flashes at that,  _ finally _ , darting out of cool nonchalance and back again, as his eyes go sharp and angry and— and almost mismatched-looking, if you let the porchlight trick you.

“Of course you are.” He sounds bitter. He had started to look at Roman, a little, but now his gaze snaps away again. He pokes at one of the many jagged clods of dirt churned up from the patchy, sparsely-watered lawn with the toe of his horrible shoes. “It’s your world, Roman. You’ll be good at anything you want to be.”

Something cold starts to trace a path down Roman’s back.

“Hey,” says Nate— it  _ had _ been Nate across the yard, before— tromping out into the light and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He stumbles to a stop in front of them, hands in his pockets, with that pleased rumpled grin of the athletically victorious and/or very high. “Fuckin’ A out there, man.”

Roman grins up at him and accepts the proffered fist bump. “Hey, thanks.”

Janus looks hilariously aggrieved by the whole performance.

Nate ruffles Roman’s hair, easy and familiar, as he passes, loping over Janus’ legs and onto the porch proper. He tugs open the sliding glass door and the sounds of Roman’s friends spill out into the cool night, more distinct now that he focuses on them, more audible. 

He can hear the snatches of some story Remy’s telling, his voice clear and loud and delighted to have an audience. He’s heard this one, Roman thinks, as a girl— Val?— starts laughing at just the right moment, just where Roman could could have guessed she would. 

“Coming?” Nate asks.

Roman aches with an unexpected sharpness of wanting. But Janus is there, and watching him, like a cat’s leering eye just outside the mousehole, and how much can it hurt to talk, just a little— so Roman shrugs, smiles, waves Nate off. “In a minute.”

He regrets it as soon as the door shuts behind him, sealing Roman and Janus off from the warm, familiar rhythm of the party inside. It’s eerily quiet. Janus is wearing viciously ripped black jeans and an oversized yellow t-shirt that also looks about as distressed as Roman feels.

“Aren’t you cold?” Roman asks, because he’s freezing, and mentally chastises himself for not bringing a proper coat. It’s nearing midnight, and  _ April _ , for fuck’s sake, he should’ve known better, he’s lived here his whole life. 

“I’m alright,” Janus says lightly. “Just keeping at the color scheme.” He reaches out to pluck at the sleeve of Roman’s crisp red-and-white varsity jacket. “Punk and prep.” His mouth does a funny, crooked thing, tilting upwards as if by force. It’s not a smile, though there is no better word for it. “A bit cliche, don't you think?”

“Fuck off,” Roman snaps, and ducks towards his cigarette, which has been steadily burning off in his hand. This time he does cough, and he flushes, embarrassed, as Janus frowns and leans over to take it away with gentle fingers. 

He stares at the flickering orange tip for a second, holding it up against the muggy purple sky, and then crushes it beneath his shoe, smudging the remnants into an ashy streak standing stark against the pale concrete of the stair. 

“The hell was that for?” Roman asks.

“I should be asking you that,” he says. “You hate those fucking things.”

“No,  _ you _ do,” says Roman. Does he? He can’t remember. His chest feels tight and the night air suddenly isn’t cold at all but too hot, too close. He tries to stand up but Janus’ hand snaps shut around his wrist, clammy and hyper-real.

“When we were eleven.” His voice is rough, those strange, asymmetrical eyes gazing huge and desperate up at Roman. “That apartment with the pretty chairs that you liked so much, that we weren’t allowed to sit in—”

“Let go of me,” Roman says. Janus doesn’t.

“We learned how to play Go Fish. And our— your— I mean, his—” His face does something odd, like a veil is being lifted and draped all at once. “Fuck. Grandad, whatever. He wouldn’t open the window even though it was July and so hot, and afterwards on the train back we— you— he swore he would never—”

“Stop it,” Roman wails. The porch light stutters and goes out, and then turns back on, brighter than before, lighting up nothing so much as Janus, and him as if from inside.

“Stop it,” he repeats, louder still, so loud that everybody inside can probably hear him, and in fact they’ve all gone quiet and even the crickets are still. “That’s not— I’m different now. Things are different now.”

He yanks his hand away and stands up and takes a few steps into the yard and then stops, by necessity more than decision, and breathes hard, filling his lungs with cold grassy air. There’s a crushed can of White Claw underfoot, he can’t tell what flavor — His vision swims.

“I can see that,” says Janus coldly, from the porch. “Jesus, Roman, in what universe could you ever be a jock?” He laughs and it sounds mean and Roman remembers that they’re not friends, actually, that knowing isn’t the same as loving.

With the way he’s lounging against the stairs he could be sprawled out on an ancient Greek dining couch, on a well-worn armchair in somebody’s living room, in the audience of a lush red-curtained theater, on a witness stand. He could be anywhere. The world flickers around him but he stays fixed. Aglow. Like a lit match.

“Football,” he spits, like it’s a terrible slur. “Cigarettes. Afterparties— As if we would have ever been invited to these, before. God. You took every high school movie cliche in the book, didn’t you, and said, you know what, I’m gonna live that.”

“So what if I wanted to try it out,” Roman says, bristling. “If I wanted to be a bit different. I— What’s wrong with football? I’m good. They like me.”

“We liked you, too,” Janus says quietly. His mouth is a hard line. “What about theater?”

“What about it?”

“This isn’t right!” Janus all but springs to his feet and stalks over to Roman in fewer steps than makes sense, jabbing a cold bony finger into his chest. He has to look up to meet Roman’s eyes, which is new. Which is  _ weird _ . “Roman! Fuck! Can’t you see? This isn’t  _ you _ !”

“Maybe it could be!” Roman yells. “You— You don’t know! You don’t know me!”

Janus recoils slightly, blinking in disbelief. “Of course I know you,” he says. “I’ve known you for decades—”

“Decades,” Roman repeats. “Don’t be such a fucking drama queen. I’m seventeen.”

Janus looks at him then, really looks, for a long, long moment. Something clicks shut.

“Right,” he says, suddenly sounding unsure. “Obviously. So am I.”

They stare at each other. The crickets chirp on. The moon and the darkened, familiar backyard twist back into focus.

“Do you want to get out of here?” Janus asks.

Roman looks at the sky. “Where to?”

Janus shrugs. “I dunno. Anywhere you want.”

“New York?” says Roman hopefully.

“I wish,” Janus says. “I was thinking more along the lines of Denny’s.”

Roman laughs and Janus’ whole face goes soft and slack, unlined. Janus probably hasn’t heard him laugh in a while. 

“Pancakes sound good,” Roman says, and grins. “Are you sure it won’t be a little too classy for you?”

Janus shoves him. “Ha ha,” he says flatly, but then brightens. “ _ Or _ we could check out that abandoned construction site Remy’s always bragging about.”

Roman snorts. “Remy’s full of shit. I doubt he actually got past the gate.”

“The river,” Janus suggests.

“Mmm… Too cold. There’s a nicer diner on third.”

“Isn’t that where all the theater kids hang out?”

“Oh, shut up. At midnight?”

“When else?”

“How about the park?”

Janus hesitates. Reaches out. “How about home?”

Roman takes a step back.

“Wait,” Janus says. “No. Fuck. Roman. Nevermind. Let’s go to Denny’s—”

“You’ll have to catch me first,” Roman says and whirls on his heel to sprint back towards the house, and when he slams the door shut behind him it is, of sorts, an ending.

* * *

The next time around, Roman is twenty-two and seated alone in a booth at a rather nice French restaurant, waiting for a meal that he will pay for with his new credit card and money that he doesn’t have. He feels kind of giddy and grown up, still, everytime he whips it out or orders a drink with his real ID with his real name and real terrible photo.

He’s an adult! He’s an adult all dressed up and sipping legally-purchased sparkling prosecco (“dry, fruity, easy drinking”)! The entire world is so open in front of him and he has a once-faraway dream caught between his cupped palms and staying, it’s staying, it’s his. Fucking hell, he’s in New York! He made it  _ and _ he’s making it, and there’s just something… nice about it. Something poetically, aesthetically pleasing. 

It’s all very Rachel-from-Friends, that’s what it is. Except for the friends part. And Joey was the actor, wasn’t he, even if he wasn’t very good, if Roman remembers correctly— He never watched Friends that much. But he liked the idea of it. Of the absurdly large purple apartment and the coffee shop. And the friends.

The small, ornate bell dangling above the door tinkles merrily, and a flash of movement catches Roman’s eye as the maitre d’ perks up and then descends. Roman glances up, instinctively, passingly— and freezes. 

Janus is immediately recognizable, though the pink hair is long gone and he now has silver studded piercings on either side of his lower lip. They glint under the moody yellow light, simultaneous beacons shimmering within the candlelight casting indistinct shapes across the lacquered tables, the wood-paneled walls.

He’s dressed in navy slacks and a button down with pale pink pinstripes, a blazer thrown over his shoulder with effortless cool as he smiles charmingly down at the waitress who has scuttled up to him, talking in cordial, inaudible tones.

There’s another guy who stumbled in at Janus’ side and now hangs just beyond his left shoulder, sticking close but not touching, not quite. He looks vaguely familiar and also nervous, slouching and scowling suspiciously at every Monet print on the walls from within the relative safety of his ragged, too-big sweatshirt.

Roman watches the two of them. He doesn’t want to be weird, but since he’s, well,  _ alone, _ he doesn’t have anybody to talk and look busy with, so it’s either look at them or look moodily into his wine glass and he feels that both options are equally weird.

He finds himself staring at Janus’ hair, which is longer, curlier, and darker: A natural, rich brown color, though maybe not Janus’ natural color. He can’t exactly remember what it was.

It’s still short on the sides and back, but not shaved like it had been, and the long strands in front drape over his forehead and slash jutting paths across his eyes, the ends tickling the sharp peaks of his cheekbones.

Focused on these details, he realises belatedly that Janus has ended his conversation with the waitress and is now weaving between tables with his friend in tow as he strides purposefully across the restaurant. Straight towards Roman.

He comes to a stop, unsmiling but soft-eyed, jaw unclenched, and raps on the edge of the table with his knuckles. “Hey.”

“Janus!” Roman says, grinning, and Janus looks a bit surprised, but pleased, as he smiles back. They left off at a weird point last time, but it’s been a while, and things are better now, anyway. Different. “Hi.”

“Long time no see,” he says, and slides into the booth without being invited, which is not  _ really _ rude, in the end, since Roman had been about to invite him. His friend, however, continues to hover awkwardly at the edge of the table.

“This is Virgil,” Janus says, as if he’s indicating an ill-trained dog. He pats a spot on the bench beside him. “Sit.”

Virgil pauses in the weird, hunted, gazing-at-Roman thing he’s doing to shoot a glare at Janus, but he sits, folding his arms around himself protectively.

“Hello,” says Roman kindly. Poor kid looks maybe eighteen at most and stressed out of his mind. He’s probably never been to a restaurant like this, if the outfit is any indication. Roman hadn’t either before today, but he considers himself a good improviser. 

Virgil is still staring at him.

“Um,” Roman says, now decidedly uncomfortable. “Have we met?”

“Yes,” Janus puts in smoothly, from over the top of the menu he’s studying. “At my nineteenth birthday party, remember?”

Roman peers at Virgil, then brightens. “OH! Yes, I think so. Were you the one who did the…you know. The ping-pong table thing?”

Virgil looks, desperately, to Janus. Janus flips over the menu and wonders aloud what exactly  _ is _ duck liver mousse. That’s a question Roman  _ can _ answer, as he researched the menu before coming here, but it hardly seems the time.

“No?” Virgil tries, at the same time Janus sighs, taking pity on him, and says, “Yes.”

There’s an awkward silence in which the two of them shoot matching murderous looks at one another. 

“Well, the other guy did it on Virgil’s dare, so I thought it counted,” says Janus at last. “I introduced you two, after dinner, but I guess you were a bit…” He winces and leans forward to tap at the rim of Roman’s wine glass.

Roman sags. “Yeah, probably.” He sighs. “Sorry, Virgil.”

“It’s okay,” says Virgil. 

“Have you ordered yet?” Janus asks. 

“I did,” Roman says, “Oh, we ought to get more hors d'oeuvres. You should try the duck liver mousse, if you want.”

Janus perks up. Virgil makes a face, which makes Roman laugh, and everybody relaxes a bit. Hesitantly, as if expecting it to turn to dust under his fingers, Virgil pulls a menu across the table towards him, then stares at it for a few, despairing moments.

“Um,” he says. “Can we get bread?”

“Hell yes,” Roman says.

Janus decides on a ragout with a complicated name that is the most expensive thing on the menu and, Roman suspects, selected entirely out of spite. After Janus shoots down his hopeful reassurances that he can just nibble on a demi baguette, Virgil, a trifle helplessly, picks some upscale riff on a burger, which is still the cheapest thing on the menu. 

Janus also gleefully goes through and orders nearly every single hors d'oeuvre on offer, except for the chopped salad, because he “can buy a bag of romaine for two dollars at Wegmans any time he damn well pleases”.

“ _ What _ are you doing,” Virgil hisses at Janus, after the menus have been swept up by the same bemused waitress that had greeted the two of them at the door earlier. Or at least Roman thinks it’s the same one. He isn’t paying too much attention.

“Well, we may as well enjoy ourselves,” Janus sniffs, waving the garcon over for a top-up on his dryish vodka martini.

“How do you two know each other?” Virgil asks Roman.

“Childhood friends,” Janus and Roman say together.

Virgil bites his lip. “Uh. Okay.”

He looks uneasy. A strange, unexpected spike of panic lodges in Roman’s stomach. He doesn’t want Virgil to be uneasy. He really, really,  _ intensely _ doesn’t.

It’s probably because Virgil is younger and confused in his misshapen hoodie. Because Roman never used to go to fancy restaurants either. Right. Of course. The twisting in his gut settles. Roman heaves a sigh. Everything is alright. It fits. The callbacks are over, and everything is alright.

The garcon swans by the table and deposits, in several shifts, a vast, colorful patchwork of dishes, steaming variously and smelling delicious. Roman vaguely thinks that this isn’t quite how French restaurants serve things but, hey, this place seems a bit experimental.

He blinks, though. “That was quick.”

“Good service,” says Janus lightly, descending on the duck liver mousse with the sharp-eyed delight of a researcher examining a previously unknown species of beetle, scraping a thin stripe onto his plate and holding it up to the candlelight to examine the texture.

Virgil lays waste to the bread basket, examining his burger-adjacent thing with narrowed eyes all the while.

Roman hesitates over charred tendrils of grilled octopus, pours himself another glass of prosecco, and goes for the ratatouille. One doesn’t have to be adventurous  _ all _ the time.

“What were you doing here by yourself, anyway?” Janus asks, once he’s tried all the weirdest dishes and rated them on a sliding scale from ‘inedible’ to ‘heavenly’. “Got stood up?”

Roman flips him off. “Go to hell, Jan. No.” He puffs up his chest. “I’m celebrating.”

“My preemptive congratulations.” Janus raises an eyebrow. “Whatever for?”

“I got a job,” Roman confesses. Joy bubbles out of him, giddy and tingly like a soda fountain. It is good to tell somebody. God, it is nice. He’s been smiling like an idiot ever since he got the call. He had twirled around his shitty apartment for what felt like an endless, blissful year, just laughing to himself and clutching at door frames and once tripping over the cat.

He went out onto the fire escape and grinned at the sunset, trickling down over the Manhattan skyline and whooped, giggly and wind-whipped and alive, and someone far down on the street below hollered back, and he thought that, right then, was the best a person could ever feel about anything. But it’s  _ so much better _ now that he has other people to share it with.

“I’m going to be on Broadway,” he tells them.

“Oh my god,” says Virgil faintly.

“I know,” says Roman, glowing. “Well. It’s not a _ role _ , really, just ensemble — But that’s a big deal!” He adds, suddenly, irrationally defensive, and thinks of watching A Chorus Line late at night on the living room sofa with Janus beside him, humming along to the finale and tossing his bowler hat in the air. No, wait (Roman mentally corrects himself), his dad’s bowler hat.

“Of course it is,” Janus says. “I’m so proud of you.”

Roman’s throat catches. “Thanks,” he manages. He feels wobbly, but good-wobbly. Maybe Janus and Virgil will come hang out with him in a coffee shop sometime.

Janus is watching him with something like sadness. “You really took it to heart, huh?” 

“Took what to heart?”

“What I said,” he says. “About… theater. And your, uh, previous career option.”

Roman shifts in his seat. “Well, you were right,” he admits. “I didn’t have it quite right. I mean, football?” He laughs. Janus doesn’t, but his lip twitches.

“I’ve always wanted this,” Roman says, quieter. “Always. You know I have, Jan. It’s my— it’s my  _ dream _ . I don’t think I could be happy any other way.”

Virgil, who has been very quiet for some time, makes a warbly, desperate noise. Both Janus and Roman swivel towards him, startled.

He’s drawn back into his seat, into his hoodie, arms tightly bracketed around his torso. It might look like cowering on anybody else, but his shoulders are a hard, defiant line. He takes a shaky breath and an instinctive thing in Roman’s chest opens one eye and stirs. He reaches out, hand slow and steady and open, without thinking, and touches Virgil’s shoulder.

“In for four—” he starts, and Virgil jerks away as if he’s been burned.

“I— I think I have to go.” He stands up, hands shaking at his sides, voice quiet but sharp. It seems to echo around the room, familiar, haunting, like there are multiple Virgils, speaking simultaneously.

Something in Roman’s chest twangs. 

_ Not again, _ he thinks, but that doesn’t make sense, that doesn’t make any fucking sense, he’s never met this guy before. Except that’s not right, either. Janus’ nineteenth birthday party. Roman was drunk. Wait. No. It’s not lining up. It doesn’t work. They haven’t spoken since they were seventeen. Roman was drunk, and now he can’t breathe.

“I’m sorry. I just— I can’t do this,” Virgil says, and bolts. 

“Goddamnit, Virge,” Janus mutters, struggling to pull his blazer on before leaping to his feet. “Fuck you. Fuck you. I  _ warned _ you—” He pauses, turns to Roman. “I’ll come back for you,” he tells him, voice wavering but earnest, looking him dead in the eye.

The candlelight twists and shifts, casting shadows it shouldn’t. There were chandeliers before, Roman thinks, but now there’s only candlelight, frightening, unstable candlelight. Not romantic, not artful. Smoke trails up from a clump of them sitting near the center of the table, a slim ribbon that slices Janus’ face in two. The left edge of his mouth slopes downward unhappily, a tiny bit at first and then farther, like a lashing across his jaw.

“I promise,” Janus insists. He reaches into the pocket of his blazer and rains down a handful of money across the table, and turns and dashes out of the restaurant, so fast that if Roman didn’t know better he might think Janus was passing through the furniture.

_ Narrative parallels _ , Roman thinks as the door slams shut, staring numbly at the too-crisp bills floating in Janus' abandoned ragout. Whatever the fucking fresh hell that means. 

* * *

“This is new,” Janus mumbles against Roman’s lips.

Roman laughs. “Locationally, maybe.” He pulls back a little, just enough to see the soft, dear arch of Janus’ smile-lined eyes as they crinkle up into a smirk. Even under the odd fluorescent lighting of the hotel hallway, Janus is lovely and elegant, all sloping lines and jagged edges that have begun, over the years, to smooth. 

Roman struggles with his wallet as he rifles through it blindly behind Janus’ back. After almost a full minute of dazed fumbling, he manages to extract the key card and brandishes it triumphantly, not that Janus can see the spoils of his victory, considering that his face is tucked into the hollow of Roman’s neck.

Roman reaches out and traces a hand up and down his husband’s side, the various familiar sharp angles and round parts, his linen button-down that is a light, mottled shade of blue and soft to the touch. Earlier, Roman called it a ‘dad shirt’, which made Janus shriek and fling a bottle of sunscreen at him, threatening divorce.

Now, Roman tilts his head down farther and continues to kiss him, even as he stabs the key card in the vague, general direction of the knob, only succeeding in producing a series of hollow tapping noises against the door. “Stupid fucking thing,” Roman mutters.

It is becoming rapidly clear that multitasking is not the most efficient way to go about things, but Roman is not a nerd  _ or _ a quitter, so he pushes Janus harder up against the door and flails his left hand around with even more verve.

There’s a beep, and the door swings open, almost sending both Roman and Janus tumbling ass over teakettle into the plush khaki carpet and on top of each other. But they miraculously remain upright as they stumble inside, laughing and clinging to each other.

The door slams behind them with a loud, dull noise, which Roman barely hears.

“Watch it,” Janus hisses when Roman backs him up into the desk in the corner of the room, with so much force it makes the lamp rattle. He slides to sit on it easily, almost unconsciously, and settles his hands on Roman’s waist even as he scowls at him. “Careful with the merchandise, darling. These are old bones.”

Roman snorts so hard he nearly chokes. “Old! Fuck off, you’re  _ thirty-eight _ !”

“That’s practically middle-aged,” Janus whines.

“Better not let my mom hear you saying that,” Roman teases.

“I’m not scared of her.”

“You should be,” Roman says, and then pauses. “Let’s stop talking about my mom.”

Janus laughs. “Good idea,” he agrees, and hauls Roman back in.

After a while, Roman pats Janus’ knee and draws back. “Stay there for a sec,” he says and goes loping off to the other side of the room.

“What?” says Janus, pouting and rumpled and gorgeous. He takes this brief interlude as an opportunity to take his shirt off the rest of the way, which is a brilliant decision, in Roman’s professional opinion.

“I’m thirsty.”

He pulls out Janus’ water bottle from the leather suitcase sitting open on the couch and (since Janus is a germaphobe for the ages and will throw a hissy fit if Roman so much as  _ touches _ the mouth of the bottle, despite the fact that they have  _ literally _ been swapping saliva for the past half hour or so) moves as if to grab one of the cups perched, overturned, on the counter beside the sink.

“Ugh, do  _ not _ use those,” Janus says, “They basically never get cleaned, it’s revolting.”

Roman stares at them with a look of dawning horror. “What,” he says.

“Oh god,” says Janus. “Oh, Roman. Oh  _ no _ .”

“How have I lived almost forty years without finding this out?” Roman wails.

“I don’t know,” Janus says faintly, with that glazed look in his eyes that Roman knows means he’s fantasizing about an alternate universe in which attacking Roman full in the face with Lysol would not, in fact, kill him. “Don’t you have  _ parents _ ?”

“I’ll do you one better,” Roman says, “I have a  _ husband _ .”

“Not for long,” says Janus blithely, hopping off the desk and stomping towards the opposite side of the hotel room from Roman, nose in the air.

“Heyyy,” Roman says, trailing after him, “It’s not so bad, neither of us have died yet. Where are you going?”

Janus pauses just before he reaches the doorway to the bedroom and puts his hands on his hips, fixing Roman with a hilarious attempt at a stern look. “I am not having sex on a desk as if we’re  _ teenagers _ .”

“You have no sense of adventure.”

“Remind me, which one of us refused to even try a bite of blood cake?”

Roman yelps. “That’s not adventure, that’s inhumane!”

“Let’s go be inhumane in the far more comfortable bedroom,” says Janus with dignity. “With the perfectly lovely bed that I paid good money for.”

“We have joint finances,” Roman grumbles.

“And between the actor and the lawyer, has it come out even, do you think?” Janus holds open the door for him and drops into a sarcastic bow. “My liege.”

“I hate you,” Roman informs him.

By the time they’ve taken off their shoes and socks and flopped down side-by-side onto the bed, Roman is mostly feeling full and sleepy and not terribly adventurous after all. He rolls over onto his side, and tugs at Janus’ arm until he rolls over too, and they’re facing each other.

Janus smiles and yawns and reaches out to brush some of Roman’s hair out of his eyes.

“What’s on the agenda for tomorrow?” Janus asks. 

Roman hums and taps his finger to his chin. “Hmm. Still deciding. I do think we  _ have _ to see the Colosseum at some point, even if it is ‘swamped by tourists.’” He makes air quotes around these last three words. “Considering that we’re, you know, also tourists, and it’s fucking cool as hell, I’ve made the executive decision that…” 

He trails off. Janus has gone very still. 

“Roman,” he says, perfectly calmly, staring at a spot of wall just beyond Roman’s head. “Where. Where are we.”

“Maybe you  _ are _ getting old,” Roman says, grinning. “Memory’s going already, is it?”

“Roman, be serious,” Janus snaps, and Roman’s eyes snap to his. They’re huge and confused, glimmering, so familiar, so lovely. 

“We’re in Rome,” he says slowly. “Obviously. What—”

“We’ve never been to Italy,” Janus says. 

Roman tries to fight down the squirming feeling, like a blend of discontent and something worse, that’s beginning to swell up in his chest. Janus is being weird, but that happens sometimes. They’ll talk it out, like they always have. It’ll make sense. It’ll be alright.

“Yes, silly, I know, that’s why we picked it,” Roman says patiently. “If you’re having second thoughts now, remember  _ I  _ suggested Barcelona, but since  _ somebody _ already went—”

“No,” says Janus. His voice is small, his eyes far away. “I’m not having… second thoughts.”

Roman frowns. He reaches out and cups the side of his face, skating a thumb along the soft, pillowy curve of Janus’ cheek. “Janus. Love. What’s wrong?”

Janus grabs Roman’s hand and pulls it off, looks at it. His face goes pale and he reaches out and touches his finger to the thin silver band on Roman’s left ring finger.

“We’re married,” he breathes. His face hollow. Startled. Wondering.

“Yes,” Roman repeats, remembering what Janus’ therapist has told him and trying not to sound freaked out. Maybe this is another one of those things, like the water bottle, or flicking the light switch. Maybe… maybe it just hasn’t come up yet. 

“I—” Janus sits up. He looks stricken, too-pale, shaking a little. He looks like Virgil. Wait. No. Who the hell is Virgil? “Fuck. Fuck!” This last one he yells, slamming his fist into the bed and producing a dull thwack. “Fuck. I can’t believe… I  _ forgot _ .” 

Roman reaches for him again, but he jerks away. It’s familiar. Too familiar. Especially since Janus has never done anything like it before, in ten years of marriage.

“You forgot— we were married?” he says, trying, desperately, to understand. There’s something he’s missing, like a puzzle piece hovering swept under the couch. It’s there. It must be. Roman remembers he’s seen it, before, but what— What does it look like?

Janus slides off the edge of the bed and sits with his back pressed up against it, on the floor. He puts his face in his hands. Roman can’t hear his breaths. He should be able to. Janus always breathes really hard when he gets upset, or fired up about ethics or something, he gets so wrapped up in himself that the mechanics of speaking fall to the wayside.

“D—” he starts. Swallows. He wants to touch him, but some primal instinct stops him, reminds him they don’t  _ do _ that, but that can’t be right, nothing is right, because they’ve been married for ten years but they haven’t but they have and still  _ nothing is right _ .

“Janus,” he says. “What did you forget?” 

He takes his hands away from his face, then. Turns around. Glares up at Roman, who is peering down at him off the edge of the bed. It’s a good three feet off the ground but it feels like a hundred miles. His stomach drops. 

Janus’ eyes are angry and teary and baleful and decidedly… not the same. Not the same as they were ten minutes ago, and not the same as each other.

“I forgot this wasn’t  _ real _ ,” he rasps, and then something… something snaps.


	2. ACT TWO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More questions, some answers, and a worrying amount of blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick warning for this chapter— some vague implications of suicidal ideation lie herein. 
> 
> I'm loving the confusion I appear to have sowed w this fic, and all comments are treasured with the fervency of a crow protecting a horde of shiny bottle-caps <3 Final chapter will be up sometime tomorrow!

The whole room lists left.

Janus slides, hands scrabbling at the carpet. He slams into the wall and collapses into a heap. The bed slides, too. The nightstand. Everything. But Roman doesn’t. He’s a fixed point, hovering, somehow, as everything crumbles around him. 

He tilts his head up towards the ceiling but it’s  _ gone _ . Ceilings are blank, generally, but this… there’s not even a color. It’s not even white. It’s nothing. There’s nothing. A lamp snaps in half, as if broken by an invisible hand, and explodes into dust that showers over them like rain that dissolves on impact.

“Yes,” Janus is saying, over and over, to himself, like a mantra. “Yes, yes, yes.” When his voice rings out again, he’s yelling. “Think, Roman. You can do it. You can remember.”

“No!” Roman is yelling too. “No, I  _ won’t _ ! Shut up! Stop it!”

“Thomas has never been to Italy!” Janus shouts.

Roman stares at him, panic climbing to a fever pitch. “Who is Thomas?” he asks. “Janus. Is there somebody else? Is there another man?”

Janus growls. His face is flickering, undoing itself and then stitching back together. A pattern keeps appearing on his left side, almost like scales, or something.

“You were so close,” he says, stumbling forward as best he can, and grabbing Roman’s arm. “Listen to me. Please. We need you to come back. Everything is falling apart.”

“Everything is falling apart here,” Roman says. He tries to pull away, but he can’t, or won’t. There is nowhere to go, because there is no ground on which to stand and walk away. 

“I know,” Janus says, voice cracking, “I know, and I’m sorry. We— I— I’m sorry this happened in the first place. It shouldn’t have gone like this. I shouldn’t have let it get so bad.”

Roman looks at him. There it is, he thinks deliriously, as his fingers close around the missing puzzle piece. “What if I don’t want to come back?” he says. 

Janus opens his mouth. Shuts it. “You have to.”

“No,” he says. “I could— We could… stay here. We could. It’s really good, isn’t it?”

“It’s clever,” Janus admits. “It’s— really real. I fell for it too. Otherwise I never would have—” His mouth works. “Taken advantage of you like that.”

“What are you talking about?”

His hands tighten into the fabric at his shoulders. A black-and-yellow-capelet. A linen button down. And then there is no fabric there anymore at all, and he is Roman’s husband again, in only his boxers and socks, still, because he’s so strange and confusing and wonderful and he sleeps in his  _ socks _ . 

“I kissed you,” he says, sounding confused about why he’s saying it.

“Of course you did,” Roman says. “We’re married.” He feels his lip wobbling, his eyes welling up. Everything is wrong. Who is Thomas? “Janus. Baby.”

Janus shuts his eyes. He wraps his hands around each other into a white-hot knot.

The floor shudders and reappears. Janus is standing equidistant from the far wall, the one with the closet, and the end of the bed. Roman sits cross-legged in the center of it and tangles his hand in the sheets and feels almost sick with relief.

“Were you—” Janus’ voice breaks. “Were you happy?”

“Of course I was!” Roman wails. “I am!”

“Well,” says Janus. His face goes all soft and broken. Roman has never loved someone so much in his life. “I’m not.”

“What?” The conversation is going sideways again, and subsequently, so is the room. Janus doesn’t fall this time, though the paintings drop off the walls as if they had been hung by scotch tape and dislodged with a gentle shake. “Why not?”

“Because,” Janus says. “Because this is the fucking hotel room from VidCon Australia.”

“We’re in Italy,” Roman insists. His breath is coming out in fast, shallow heaves. He wants to  _ throttle _ Janus. He has never hated someone so much in his life. 

“No,” Janus says. “I’m sorry. We aren’t.”

Before Roman can even think about stopping him he’s over by window and pulling back the curtains. For a second there’s just… the usual blackness of night. A starry sky. Then the color warps, changes, into something that’s not a color at all, but if it was, it would be mauve.

Janus says, “You can’t even imagine what’s outside the fucking window,” and tugs the curtains harder, farther open and then clean off, and the wall and then the room explodes inward in a shattering burst of non-color, dissolving, fading, smaller and smaller, and Roman can’t tear his eyes away. He’s looking, but he isn’t, of course, because there is nothing to see.

* * *

“Fuck.” Janus’ face hovers over him, twisted and frightened and more ashen than usual. It starts to blur around the edges, his too-light eyes and too-light hair swimming in a sea of white, white white. It’s snowing. Cold flakes land on Roman’s burning cheeks, each one terrible, painful, stinging like a brand. 

“Roman, come on, fuck. Eyes open. Eyes open, goddamnit!”

A hand shoves Roman’s shoulder and he gasps, startled alert once more, and Janus is tugged back into focus. He grits his teeth, his unnaturally white teeth that Roman has always been so jealous of, his fangs digging into his lower lip.

He tilts his head to the side and sees that his right arm— or what used to be his right arm— is wrapped in torn-off strips of Janus’ flannel shirt. The paltry remains of it, as well as his jumpers, coat, and scarf, are scattered in the endless expanse snow around them, like corpses.

Above the waist, Janus now only wears a thermal shirt, which is blue and has thin green stripes, and he’s shivering. He’s got blood on his hands and running up his exposed forearms, backsplash on his cheeks, in his hair somehow. 

The snow around them is pockmarked by patches of red. It’s like an icee, Roman thinks, somewhat hysterically. It stands out ultra-vivid against the unblemished slope of the gently inclining hill that stretches out in the same direction as his former arm.

There is a forest on his other side, he knows, and beyond it a newly torn-up field, and between that impasse and this one there is a trail of dripping blood and footprints from when Janus dragged him, the two of them stumbling over rocks and weaving around trees, trying to confuse their trail.

But he can’t turn his head and look. He doesn’t want to, he tells himself, that’s why. The shock is starting to fade. Now Roman is cold. The snow is soaking into him, little by little. If he lies here long enough he may become fully saturated.

“There’s a village over behind that hill,” Janus says, sounding more terrified than Roman has ever heard him, more terrified than even the time they got cornered by a pack of rogue werewolves, when Janus had just laughed and negotiated with them smoothly and steadily, and elbowed Roman in the back in four-seven-eight rhythm until his panic attack faded.

“No,” Roman rasps. 

Janus’ eyes flash. “Fuck you,” he says. “Please.”

Roman shakes his head. “No,” he insists. “We can’t. You have to get the chimera.” Send it to the reserve in Greece and we can finally close this fucking case. Come on. Jan. We were so close. We can’t  _ leave _ it here.”

“I can’t leave  _ you _ here,” Janus says brokenly. “Fuck the case. We have to get you back to headquarters as soon as possible.”

“Fuck the case’,” Roman repeats, trying for a grin. “Wow, I never thought I’d hear you say that one.” 

He doesn’t want Janus to sound like that, look at him like that. He feels weird and fuzzy all over, like he’s drunk, but bad, scary, out-of-control drunk. He thinks he might be in pain. It’s kind of difficult to remember what words go with what sensation. 

“Stop it,” says Janus. “Oh, stop it. I hate everyone else at the office, you think I can stand to work with any of them?” He swipes his eyes with the back of a gloved hand. I wouldn’t last a week. They’ll make a vampire joke and I’ll feed them to a freybug and then where will I be?”

“Hey,” Roman says. He smiles up at Janus. His best friend. “Think I’ll finally make the front page of the Globe?”

“Your obituary certainly fucking won’t,” says Janus. “But if you live, then yes.”

Roman feels sluggish. Faint. “Okay,” he says. Janus’ face swims. Blurs. Then tightens. Like somebody keeps adjusting the focus on a camera. “Fine. But as soon as—”

There is a roar that seems to shake the ground. Too many pounding footsteps. The distant but distinct sound of a tree falling.

“The chimera,” Roman breathes. “Janus. Janus. Go.”

They look at each other. Nothing flickers or changes.

“A chimera,” Janus repeats. “Holy fuck.”

“That’s  _ so cool _ ,” Roman breathes. Janus gives him a glare that reminds Roman of nobody so much as Logan. 

Another roar. It sounds like it’s struggling to maneuver through the trees. There is a THUMP and a WSHHH as something large-ish falls into the snow. It could be a branch.

“It’s getting closer,” Janus says. “Where’s the restraints?” He pats himself down, uselessly. “Did I drop my stunner?”

“In your coat pocket, dumbass,” says Roman. He tries to sit up. “Fuck. Jan. It hurts.”

“I know, I’m sorry.” Janus scrambles back over to him, fighting simultaneously to get his coat on, reassuringly pat Roman’s hair, and fix the settings on his stunner. He only has two arms here, though, so it’s not going so well.

Roman flops back into the snow, which he can barely feel anymore. It must be cold. Snow usually is. His arm is gone. Oh my god, he lost an arm. He lost an  _ arm _ .

Everything is going upside-down, but not in the universe-shattering way: In the twisty, painful, woozy, consciousness-slipping way. In a  _ real _ way. This world isn’t right, but it stays put around him all the same. He feels like he might slide off the ground, like it’s a sheet pan somebody’s shaking and he’s a rattling marble.

What the hell. He and Janus are monster hunting partners. This would be the best thing ever if it wasn’t the worst thing ever.

“I can’t—” The words die in his throat. He takes a shuddering breath. His eyes are stinging. It’s snowing. It’s snowing. He’s not cold at all. But it’s snowing.

Janus kneels down beside him. “Can—” he starts. “Can we die here?”

“I don’t know,” Roman admits. “Haven’t tried it yet.”

“We have to go,” Janus says. He sounds panicked, but sure. “Back to headquarters.”

Roman shakes his head. Near-frantic. “No,” he manages. “Farther.”

“Yes. Right.” Janus’ face clears. “Wait. Last time, how did

* * *

Roman presses his back against the wall of the tiny, too-small closet and tries to force himself to breathe normally. Janus is opposite him, shoulder jammed in the corner where two walls meet, his weight supported fully by the building.

His face is pinched, tight. His smart clothes are a-rumple. He’s holding up Logan by the underarms, whose impassive face is pressed into a grimace, fingers tightened into the fabric over the chest of his crisp black shirt. With great effort, he releases his grip, and holds his hand up to the single, flickering lightbulb dangling from a chain in the center of the storage room. It glints wet and red. 

“Well,” he says, conversationally. “Janus, when you told me it might be uncomfortable, this wasn’t exactly what I was expecting.”

“Shut up!” both Janus and Roman hiss at him. He blinks, bemused, but does.

There’s a flurry of heavy footsteps, just outside the door. There are voices yelling, but Roman can’t make out any specific words.

Janus murmurs something under his breath, does a tapping motion with his hand like he’s playing an air-piano, and Roman hears the lock on the door slide shut. The three of them stay still, tense and barely breathing, until the group of Guards turns a corner and the footsteps fade from earshot.

“We have to find Patton,” says Janus, still half-whispering.

“He can’t blow his cover,” Logan snaps, and then looks startled by his own words.

“What about R—?” Roman asks.

“He told us to stay.” Janus chews his lip. “He’d be pissed. Shit. This is bad, isn’t it?”

“Of course it’s bad,” Logan whines. “Our plan— The files—” 

“Oh, you’re terrible,” Janus snaps. “You get stabbed and all you can worry about are the stupid fucking files.”

“If it was up to  _ me _ ,” Logan says, “ _ I _ wouldn’t have removed the knife—”

“I panicked, alright!”

“Can’t you heal him?” Roman asks.

Janus goes very pale, his eyes very huge. “Um,” he squeaks. “I don’t know about that.”

“But you’ve been practising,” Roman presses. “I saw you earlier. I know you can do it.”

“It takes a  _ lot _ of magique,” Janus spits, “And I don’t know if you ungrateful bastards were paying attention back there, but I just levitated a three-hundred pound chandelier, so you know, feeling a little drained!”

“Jay,” says Logan. “Please.”

“I,” he says. He looks wildly between Logan and Roman, who are staring up at him with identical broken, hopeful expressions. “I can’t.”

He lets go of Logan, who slumps, startled, into the wall, fingers scrabbling at the smooth wood. Janus undoes the locking spell, throws open the door, and runs. Roman grabs Logan by the arm and gives chase. 

The elegant, marbled corridors of the estate are high-ceilinged and echoey, the walls lined with a series of portraits. Above them, the elegant carved balustrades expose pockets of the second storey, columns trailing up to a pretty painted ceiling.

The house is so huge that Roman thinks a good four people could live here independently and not run into each other for weeks. The gala is all the way on the other side of the property, in the ballroom, so this wing stands empty— except, of course, for the Guard.

Roman winces at that thought. His feet hurt as they pound against the hard stone floor. Logan, beside him, is running surprisingly well for somebody with a stab wound.

“Why couldn’t  _ I _ have gotten dinner at a French restaurant?” he grumbles, as Roman yanks him around a corner. The hallway opens up into a lavishly decorated sitting room. “But no-o-o, I get stabbed! I get magic reconnaissance missions! I get a chase sequence!” 

“Can you actually shut up for once in your life?” Roman hisses.

“I’m trying something out,” says Logan, a little waspishly. “I’m calling it ‘radical blathering’. Seems to work for you well enough.”

“I will leave you here,” Roman says, but continues to drag him along.

Logan says nothing for a while. There are three doors at the end of the sitting room. Roman vaults over a couch (mostly because he can) and is forced to let go of Logan in the process, who curses and scrambles after him.

Roman pauses, and only then does he realize that one door stands ajar, as if someone slipped through and kept running without bothering to check if it shut behind them.

He kicks it open the rest of the way, and glances back at Logan, who catches up to him, huffing and disgruntled and shoving his glasses back on his face.

“ _ There _ you are,” says Roman. “You could have at least made an effort, Suckrates.”

Logan tilts his head about 45 degrees to the left. “I missed you,” he says, matter-of-fact as ever, like he’s commenting on the weather or what’s for breakfast. 

Roman looks away from him and blinks, hard. “Come on,” he says. 

They keep running down the hallway, because there’s nowhere else to go. No more doors or alternate turns appear. It’s singular, straight, and endless: Half-lit by some invisible source that illuminates the low-ceilinged passage in dim but steady white light.

The slim corridor seems to follow them, elongating as they move. Sometimes Roman feels like he’s about to put his weight on water and go stumbling, but if there is floor nowhere else, it is always beneath his feet. He discovers it’s easier not to look down. He’s just starting to feel tired, forcing hard breaths through his tightened lungs, when all of a sudden, they hit a dead end. Roman screeches to a stop, narrowly avoiding slamming head-first into a white-stuccoed wall. Logan, behind him, does not avoid slamming into Roman’s back.

“Hm,” Logan muses, pushing Roman aside to examine the blockade.

Roman glances back at the rectangle of light that signifies the distant doorway to the sitting room. It shudders, the flat sides turning wobbly and scalloped. Its width flicks back and forth between that of a normal door and that of a medium-sized textbook.

“Not again,” Roman sighs.

“You are terribly unrealistic, in an estate of this perceived age and size,” Logan informs the wall before him, peering at it with sharp, eager eyes. 

As Roman watches, confused but curious, Logan reaches out and scrapes his fingernail across the surface with a quick grating sound. He peers at his finger, brightens, and holds it up to show Roman the thin strip of plaster caught beneath his nail.

“Whitewash,” Logan says triumphantly, grabs Roman by the hand, and drags the both of them through the wall.

They come out on the edge of a forest. Janus is there, sitting with his back against a tree and legs folded up close to his chest. He’s hunched over, face pressed into his forearms, which in turn rest atop his knees. Roman glances back in the direction from whence he and Logan came, instinctively, but there’s no sign of the wall, or the passage way. An enormous house looms out of the ground some distance away, but it’s too dark to see much of it besides the general silhouette.

“I thought so,” says Logan, looking very pleased with himself indeed. He lets go of Roman’s hand and brushes his own against each other as if clearing them of imaginary dust.

Then, he unceremoniously peels up the edge of his shirt and frowns at the injury marring his upper stomach like a disappointed parent. 

Roman grimaces and figures he should probably look away, but before he can do so, the wound starts to wither under Logan’s glare, shimmering around the edges, growing smaller and smaller until it vanishes entirely and all that remains is smooth, scarless skin.

“Huh,” says Roman. “That’s a fun trick.”

Janus, who has been watching the proceedings with an air of palpable but veiled agitation, scowls at that.

“Are you okay?” Roman asks him.

“Am  _ I _ okay?” Janus parrots, sounding incredulous. He lets out a massively dramatic scoff and pushes himself to his feet. “What is wrong with you?”

“Nothing is wrong with me,” Roman says, holding his hands out in front of him defensively. “This is all your fault, anyway.”

Janus inhales sharply. “Maybe,” he grinds out, “But you don’t get to go off and— ruin everything, just because you want to play damsel in distress, just because you're upset. You are so fucking  _ selfish _ .”

Roman raises an eyebrow at him. “I thought it was a good thing to be selfish.”

“That’s not  _ fair _ , you—” 

Logan jerks his head towards the shadow of the large house, eyes narrowing. “I think I smell smoke,” he says. “I think something is on fire.” 

“Of fucking course it is,” Janus huffs, throwing his hands in the air. “Great! What’s next? Space pirates descending to attack us?”

“Uh, let’s not jinx it,” says Roman, glancing about nervously. “Come on, we can’t stay here for long. Let’s head to Remy’s and hope that the others will meet us there.”

Janus chews at his lip. “I know, but still. I could do a tracking spell, but it’s a little—No! GAH!” He tangles his hands in his hair and doubles over, hissing under his breath. “Fuck! No! Dammit, I keep forgetting!” Snapping back up to his full height, he leans across Roman and grabs Logan by the shoulder, shaking him. “Logan, hit me if I start talking like— Logan?”

Logan is still gazing off into the distance, looking blank. “This is the last chance we have to get any actual evidence of corruption,” he says, “Fucking convenient for them, isn’t it, if all the backlogs get destroyed—”

“Why is it like this  _ again _ ?” Janus howls, letting go of Logan and accidentally sending him stumbling a good four feet backwards with the momentum of it. “Why is it so— Terrible? I thought these scenarios were things you wanted, and after, you know,  _ Italy _ , I thought…” 

His mouth wobbles. He squints his eyes shut, ducks his head, and breathes hard until it stops. “But that can’t be right,” says, as if he’s trying to convince himself. “Roman.” A pause. “Why would anybody want this?”

Logan has gotten quiet, and he looks uneasy, but at least he’s not staring into space anymore. “You said last time he almost died.”

“Yes,” says Janus. “It was awful, I don’t understand—”

“Well.” Logan’s voice is gentler. “He did run away.”

There is a terrible, terrible, silence. 

“No,” Janus says. “No. No. That doesn’t make sense. That can’t be right.”

Logan was right. The estate is on fire. 

“The estate is on fire,” Roman observes. Logan and Janus’ voices come to him warbly and muffled, as if from underwater, and even then, with a hearty five second delay.

“Roman.” Logan takes a step towards him, hands hanging at his sides with palms facing outward, like Roman is some kind of scared fucking stray dog. “I think we should talk—”

“I don’t want to talk to either of you!” Roman yells, stomping his foot. Tears are prickling behind his eyes. “You ruin everything!”

“You are such a child,” Janus says. 

“And  _ you _ are not helping,” Logan tells him.

“No no no no no,” Roman is saying. “I’m not supposed to be here,”

“Yes, exactly,” says Logan, and his voice is ever so gentle. Roman didn’t know he was capable of being so gentle. “Let’s go home. We will all be much calmer in an environment in which we are comfortable, and more capable of speaking kindly and honestly. Roman, I can promise you, it’s all going to be okay—”

“I’m supposed to be on the other side of the city,” Roman wails. “Nothing should be on fire! That should have happened earlier! You messed everything up, it won’t  _ work _ now.” Roman looks around wildly, half-expecting the trees to start uprooting themselves and snapping in half, for the ground to open up and dissolve into not-mauve. But… but it doesn’t.

He locks eyes with Janus, who looks as horrified-relieved-confused as Roman feels. 

“What,” Janus starts.

Logan is squinting into the distance again, even though there isn’t anything there. Something lodged behind his eyes knocks itself loose, in such a clear, specific movement that Roman  _ sees _ it, like watching the golden square of a distant window snap to black.

“I’d rather die than let those assholes get away with this second time,” Logan growls, and turns his steely gaze onto Romand and Janus. His jaw is set, his voice more livid and alive than it has ever been before. “Don’t you see? If we back off now it’s over.

“Are you with me?”

Roman hesitates. There’s a  _ yes  _ on the tip of his tongue, a  _ when am I not _ : The next line of an long-memorized song, automatically rising to fill itself in when the radio’s tenuous connection falters and leaves an empty space. But the pause extends and the nonexistent music skips a beat and then another and then there is only disconnect, strangeness: A word rolling around in his mouth that he didn’t put there. A thought that he didn’t think.

Janus, beside him, opens his mouth and starts to speak, though he doesn’t get far enough through the word for it to be identifiable. He slams his lips shut. Furrows his brow. The three of them stand there, in a strange, too-distant triangle, amidst a stilted silence, a silence that should not exist. There are no crickets in this forest. Janus’ jaw is working, chewing over silent words. Very slowly, he reaches out and puts a hand on Logan’s arm.

“It’s too real,” he says, clearly trying not to sound frantic. “It’s creating a new plot.”

“What?” Logan asks, swiveling toward Janus so fast his neck cracks. “That can happen?” He pauses. “Ah. No need to answer that. Significant evidence to that point has already been demonstrated.”

“Thanks for the insight, Wise Guy,” Roman says through gritted teeth.

“Logic,” Janus says. His voice is still full of forced calm. “ _ Now _ .”

Logan frowns. Glances at Roman. “Wait. But what about—"


	3. ACT THREE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which conversations are had, punches are thrown, and Janus tries his hand at mixing cocktails.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for coming on this whole self-indulgent wild ride with me! I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, which by the way was a whole fucking lot. This final chapter has gotta be my favorite, plus (fun fact!) it made me cry while writing it :)

Roman swings his legs off the edge of the bar stool, spinning it in lazy circles and bemusedly watching as Dad clatters across the kitchen.

He has the pink apron with the fish on it thrown over his waistcoat but he’s forgotten to tie it in the back, so the strings fly behind him as he tears through various drawers in search of the ever-elusive small offset spatula.

(“What are  _ you _ supposed to be?” Roman had asked earlier that day.

“I’m your dad,” Dad said, “In a suit.”

“That’s a cop out,” muttered Papa from the dining room table, where he was frantically sewing fancier buttons onto his old med school lab coat.) 

“Dad,” Roman says. “It’s probably on the counter.”

Dad pulls his upper body out from the cabinet beneath the stove to cast Roman a quizzical look. “On the counter? Where?”

“In the thingy with the big spoons,” Roman says. “By the sink.” He uses one hand to push himself off the edge of the kitchen island and launch the stool into a few dizzying spins. 

He’s not supposed to do that, usually. When he tries, Papa gets all stressed out and insists on hovering nearby to spot him and that takes all the fun out of it, which makes Roman whine, and then there is No More Spinning. At the moment, however, Dad is distracted by Mission Spatula and has yet to even notice.

Roman does another round of spins, just because he can, even though it makes him lightheaded. He grabs the lip of the island to steady himself and waits for his vision to un-blur. Almost as soon as the kitchen returns to its familiar form, bathed in the dreamy sunlight of a cold but bright autumn afternoon, Dad draws from his exploration of the thingy with the big spoons and holds the spatula aloft, triumphant.

“How did you get all the way over here, mister?” Dad asks it, which makes Roman giggle. He points it at Roman and raises an eyebrow. “Your father needs to stop messing with my organizational system.”

Roman grins. “He says the same thing about you.”

Dad laughs. “C’mon over here, kiddo, I need my assistant for this part.” 

He brightens, eagerly sliding off the seat and skipping over to the other side of the kitchen island, where the tray of newly-cooled brownies awaits. Dad pulls over the tiered step-stool, which Roman obediently clambers onto— He notes with pride that he’s tall enough that he uses the lower step now. 

When Dad turns around to pull open the fridge, Roman leans over and pokes (just once!) at the brownies, which are fudgy but not mushy. Just right. His hand is returned innocently to his side well before Dad returns with the bowl of frosting and the fun sprinkle-caddy-shaker thing, which Roman is always tempted but never allowed to eat straight out of. Roman lunges for the frosting, but he’s stopped by a gentle hand at his shoulder.

“Might wanna take this off first, bud,” Dad says, cradling the sides of Roman’s skull and gingerly taking off Roman’s fragile costume headpiece.

It has been fashioned, by an increasingly distressed Papa, out of an old beanie, a cereal box, and an inordinate amount of cheap acrylic. Roman had fought for the addition of facepaint, but even Papa’s best attempts in that field had made Dad laugh so hard he had to sit down for a while, and so Frankenstein’s monster (not Frankenstein, a point which Papa is very adamant about) is only properly green from the forehead up.

Dad sets it safely down on the kitchen table and retrieves another apron from the post beside the door. This one is white, though spotted with a few faint stains that were left to sit too long before washing and never quite came out, and reads, “This Is What I Got in the Chanukah Gift Exchange” in twirly blue text. He loops it ceremoniously over Roman’s bowed head.

“What time are my friends coming?” Roman asks, straightening up.

Dad glances at the clock. “In about twenty minutes. But there’s no rush, I can finish icing those up you need me to.”

“I won’t,” Roman assures him.

Dad laughs and ruffles Roman’s hair. “Alright, you can have full creative control,” he says, wandering over to the sink. “Go get ‘em.”

They work back to back for several quiet, pleasant minutes: Dad washing dishes, Roman painstakingly spreading the frosting across the brownies and into his best approximation of an even pillow.

Something at the edge of his vision catches his attention. He looks up and discovers a black bowl of butterfingers, sitting innocuously besides the wicker fruit basket. There are too few pieces of candy in the bowl to be for the trick-or-treaters, so it can’t hurt to have just one, can it? Dad won’t mind, he knows how much Roman likes peanut butter. Mind made up, Roman reaches for one, and then stops, hand hovering a few inches above the black plastic cusp, as if someone somewhere has hit a “pause” button.

He stares at the crisp yellow wrappers, the crinkled edges, the shimmering blue accents. Punchy and bright, yet somehow cartoony. False. Like a clipping of a photograph snipped out and superimposed onto real life.

Roman glances backwards towards the soft, sloping line of Dad’s shoulders in his cream-colored jacket. He’s singing quietly to himself (“when you wish upon a star… ”) as he lathers up the batter-stained mixing bowl, voice just barely audible over the soft rush of the warm water pouring over his calloused knuckles. 

The room is carefully, lovingly, aglow. It reminds Roman of birthday candles lit by a steady hand on a warm windless night, candles that never once waver or threaten to go out. The fading light scrapes across the rumpled peaks of Dad’s hair and glints off the spires of the whisk that is propped up against the edge of the sink. 

On the perpendicular wall to his left is the doorway to the living room, with the hand-painted porcelain mezuzah at the edge of the frame. There is a visible slice of the plush grey sofa with all its mismatched pillows, a bookmarked copy of  _ To Kill a Mockingbird _ perched atop a perpetually-lopsided orange cushion.

There is the refrigerator, with all its funky magnets (FAM-ILY spelled out in rainbow letters along the top edge), scribbled crayon drawings, photographs from vacations, brochures advertising events at the synagogue, and a flyer for the upcoming parent-teacher night.

This last one has the date printed on it in big pink letters, surrounded by a puffy clipart thought bubble. It reads  _ November 15th, 1998 _ , and Roman realizes, with an aching twang of sadness, that this is the house of Thomas’ elementary school best friend.

He shuts his eyes and tries to breathe it in. There’s the lingering scent of melted chocolate and toasted sugar, mingling with the lavender soap Dad is using. Oh god. It hurts. It sings. It shoots through him like a plucked guitar string, reverberating and filling up the hollow of his chest, though not quite full enough that he can pretend it is anything more than soundwaves. He listens to it, holds it, the dissonant chord. An angry hand slams against piano keys and presses down and  _ stays _ . The windchime hanging outside the half-open window tinkles as the chill October winds its way, playful, down a half-remembered cul de sac. 

By this time, little kids clutching pumpkin-shaped baskets should be out and about, their joyous lilting voices chattering and shrieking as they race their friends to the next house. But all Roman can hear is the windchime, and the throbbing not-quite-melody rattling around within the confines of his ribcage.

His friends will be here in ten-ish minutes. He doesn’t have much time.

He opens his eyes.

“Dad,” he says.

Dad turns around, wiping his hands on the dish towel. “Hey, bug. What’s buggin’ ya?”

Roman looks down at his tiny feet in their heather grey socks, at the stripe of red around the ankle. “Are you—” He swallows. “Are you mad at me?”

“Oh,” says Dad. “No, kiddo. No. Never.”

Roman chews at his lip. “Never?”

Dad hangs up his dish towel, carefully, on the hook above the sink where it always goes. When he speaks, his voice is quiet, barely above a breath, but it carries across the kitchen with ease. It carries all the way to the edge of the world.

“We might not agree about everything all the time,” he says. “In fact, we  _ shouldn’t _ . But you’re never supposed to feel like you’ve gotta agree with me, especially when your happiness is on the line.”

“But you… you’re  _ right _ .”

“No,” he says. “Not all the time. Nobody can be.”

“I wish you were,” he mumbles, in the general direction of his feet. He feels absurdly small. This kitchen is so beautiful. He wants to stay here forever.

“I don’t,” Dad says. Roman glances up in time to catch the last vestiges of a bittersweet half-smile. Dad’s mouth tilts up, down, wiggles from side to side. It reminds Roman of an anxious caterpillar, and it might be funny. It might. But it isn’t.

Dad turns his gaze toward the window, out at the warbling wind chime, and something in his face steadies, something that Roman never before realized was askew.

“If you never listen to me again,” Dad says, each word measured,  _ aching _ , slow, “If you—” His voice doesn’t crack, not like Janus’ does, but it frays a little at the edges. “If you never want to come back. That’s okay. But please, listen to this.”

Roman’s heart is pounding. He nods, mutely, but Dad isn’t looking at him.

“There is nothing you could  _ ever _ do,” Dad starts, “that would make me mad enough to stop loving you, or even to love you any less.

“That sort of thing, that feeling… it’s forever. It doesn’t matter what you do, or how you feel about me, or how far you run away. There are no limits. No conditions. And if I made you feel like there were, then I have failed. And I am mad at myself for that, but not you. Not even a little.” There is an achingly tense pause. “And I am so, so  _ sorry _ .”

Dad takes a shaky breath and turns halfway back to the sink. The water has been running all this time. He detaches the spray head and directs the jet at his free hand, and lets it spill over all the curves and valleys as he watches, intent but unseeing. The stream of it scatters across the counter, across the floor, across his courtroom suit: the khaki waistcoat, the sloppily-tied white tie, the bright blue shirt rolled up to the elbows.

“Patton,” Roman says.

Patton turns around. If he is surprised that his young son has been suddenly replaced by a thirty-year-old man, he doesn't show it.

“Hey,” he breathes.

“Did you— did you mean it?” Roman asks. His voice still sounds tinny, like a child’s. He is wearing a white sweater and a red scarf that coils around his neck, almost protectively. One tendril of it slopes across the edge of his shoulder, barely reaching midway between his elbow and collarbone but, still, maybe— if a person was to squint—

“Oh, Roman,” Patton says. “Every single word.”

“I—” Roman swallows. He feels fuzzy all over, his heart too big for his body, but not in the world-ending way. He tugs at the end of his scarf, which decides he likes a lot. The weight around his shoulders is comforting. He wonders if that’s how Patton feels about his usual hoodie, if he feels unsteady without it right now. If they had discussed the callback in the living room, how would things have gone? There was something Logan said, about comfort, and speaking kindly… 

Roman is comfortable here.

“I love you too,” he says, meaning it, meaning it so, so much. Patton’s whole face clears, lights up, and god, fuck, why does everything hurt? “But I don’t know if I’m… ready.”

Patton’s expression falls, a bit. “I’m supposed to bring you back,” he says, more to himself than anything.

“I  _ know _ ,” Roman says, in a tone that has just a touch of a whine to it. He doesn’t  _ want _ Virgil to rip Patton’s head off, or anything, but… 

“The others won’t be happy.”

“I know.”

“But…” he hesitates. “I guess I don’t  _ have _ to tell them.”

Roman gasps, clapping a hand to this chest in mock horror. “You’re going to  _ lie _ ?”

For a split second, Patton looks hilariously guilty. “Maybe a little.”

“But Pitter-Pat,” Roman teases, “I thought lying was wrong.”

“Well,” Patton says, and tries for a smile. “‘One must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can’t do anything about them.’”

“Did Janus say that?”

Patton really does smile, then. “No. Harper Lee.”

Roman thinks about the dog-eared book on the sofa, the butterfingers, the suit, and is overcome by a rush of pride. Logan and Janus won’t know how fucking  _ smart _ Patton was today. When Roman comes back, he will tell them.

“You’re not ready to go home now,” Patton says, breaking through Roman’s thoughts. He tilts his head to one side as if waiting for clarification, which Roman gives in the form of a nod. “Do you think you will be?”

“Yes,” Roman says, without hesitation.

“Okay.” Patton appears to be visibly steeling himself. Roman, still standing on the child-sized step stool, has to tilt his head downard to look at him. He doesn’t seem like a father, not really, not now. He seems more like a friend.

“In that case,” Patton says, “I can wait.”

Roman sags with relief. “Okay,” he breathes, then: “I’m sorry too.”

“I know.”

They stand there for a moment, smiling sadly at each other.

“Well,” says Patton decisively, “Are you going to go, or shall I?”

Roman looks around one last time. “I will,” he says, and he turns around and walks out into and through the living room. 

He looks down at his sock-clad feet as he goes and does not try for a last glance back at the familiar dips in the sofa, at the stack of scrapbooks on the coffee table, or even Patton, hovering in the doorway wreathed by impossibly-soft light, because he wants this to stay real. Just for one minute more.

By the time he reaches the front door, with its peeling paint and height-marking notches on the frame, it is the only thing that remains of the room, and quite possibly the universe. Roman lays his hand on the knob, which is cool but not cold, and takes one deep breath.

Then, he shoves open the door, squinting against the near-painful flood of bright light which overtakes him, and steps out and into

* * *

“Die, scum!” Remus cackles, lobbing a chair in Roman’s direction with the inhuman force afforded to him by his jacked-up mechanical exoskeleton suit.

Roman swears and ducks behind one of the control panels, wincing as shrapnel from a computer screen explodes over him like a super fun, deadly rain cloud. A stuttering, mechanical voice rings out as the built in AI system activates, then dissolves into dog-whistle registers of screeching— which is very, very audible even despite Roman’s fingers stuffed into his ears.

“Prepare to be felled by my inimitable wrath, you fraudulent, glory-hungry, ringworm—” Remus crows, then abruptly cuts himself off. He stops dead, frowns, and shakes his head to clear it, scrunching his nose in distaste. “Whoa, J-Anus was right. That’s  _ fucked _ .”

There’s the sound of a chair being ripped out from its rotating socket, a terrible WOOSH, and then Roman’s makeshift shelter is shaken by the impact of a very expensive and sophisticated piece of furniture. He digs his fingers into the seam between two interlocked pieces of floor to avoid being blasted across the room. 

Before Remus can further bolster his current property damage stat, Roman peeks around the edge of the now-severely-dented desk and aims a furious blast of his plasma ray in what he hopes is the direction of his brother’s head. To his dismay, the energy stream bounces uselessly off the reinforced window and is reabsorbed by the Holo-Sphere. It shudders in protest, the projected map flipping momentarily to a pale shade of mauve before resettling into its usual angry pink.

“Fuck, that is  _ cool _ ,” Remus says gleefully. “You came up with this?”

Standing on the other side of the control room, he is a distorted, lopsided thing with a too-wide smile, warped into mirthfulness by the funhouse-mirror lens of the Sphere. He leers, steepling his hands in front of his chin and tapping his fingers against one another. Despite the, you know, mechanical arms and surrounding spaceship, the expression of vicious delight on his face is so wonderfully ordinary that Roman kind of wants to hug him.

“ _ What’s _ fucked?” Roman asks, instead.

“The whole… mental script thing,” Remus explains. He strolls around the edge of the Sphere so that they can see each other properly. The picture-perfect villain strut would be more intimidating if Roman didn’t know Remus practiced it in the mirror on a nightly basis. “It’s highly disturbing,” he continues. “Fantastic work.”

“Thanks,” says Roman, aiming for dry but coming up bitter. “The one time I don’t try.”

“Now, now,” says Remus, holding up his hands placatingly. “Don’t get your spleen in a twist. You’re valued and shit, blah de blah, time to scurry on home to sing kumbaya and get your dick sucked by the rest of your merry gang.”

Roman sighs. Well, he figures, it was only a matter of time until the others gave up on him. “No thanks.” 

“Uh- _ doy _ ,” Remus scoffs. We’re in a fucking  _ spaceship! _ How sick is that?” He brightens, which in his case can be likened to an increase from 350 to 500 watts. “I’ve always wanted to find out if my head will actually freeze if I stick it outside.”

“.... Like in the Magic School Bus?”

“What- _ ever _ , PBS Kids.” He flaps a hand at Roman dismissively. “They probably dumbed it down for the babies. I’m hoping for explosions.”

“ _ You’re _ a baby,” Roman says helplessly, and aims another plasma-blast at Remus.

“Oooh, getting frisky!” Remus yelps, ducking out of the way. “Do it again! Harder!”

Roman glares at him. “Why can’t you ever just leave me  _ alone _ ?”

Remus rolls his eyes so hard that it looks like they’re about to fall out of his head, then pulls up a hand beneath his chin to catch them. He pauses. Blinks. “Aww, balls. That trick doesn’t work here.”

“Small mercies.”

“Any-woozles,” Remus says. “What’s the fun in that?”

“Not everything is about having fun,” he mutters. Now that Remus is no longer actively trying to bash his head in, Roman grasps the edge of the desk to pull himself to his feet. He brushes some dust off the front of his trousers, noticing that he’s wearing a red-and-black jumpsuit that has a clear Star Trek sort of lineage.

Remus has taken a seat in the center console chair, beside the Holo-Sphere, though “seat” is a strong word— he’s sprawled out upside-down with his legs thrown over the back, and using the attached controller to spin himself in lazy circles.

“Not everything  _ isn’t _ ,” Remus retorts. His easy smile rotates out of view and, when it returns, has tightened into a pout. “Though  _ nothing _ is with you anymore.”

Roman isn’t really sure how to respond to that. He feels like he’s fourteen and holed up in his room as someone bangs on the door and says his name, over and over and over. He wishes Remus would go away.

“Yeah, well,” he says, and then stops.

“You’re fucking booooring now.” The central vowel of ‘boring’ carries Remus all the way through two full rotations of the chair.

“What do you want?” Roman snaps. “What, you want me to, fucking, I don’t know… tell you I’m  _ sorry _ ?”

“Maybe,” Remus chirps. “Just for the novelty of it.”

“Oh, be serious.” Roman shoves a frantic hand through his hair, anger flooding his chest with a steady, familiar heat.

“I’m never serious,” says Remus. He fixes Roman with an upside-down grin that looks like a frown when taken in isolation. “And neither are you.”

“I don’t know,” Roman says. “Why can’t I be? I can be anything I want.”

“It still wouldn’t be  _ you _ ,” says Remus, as if it’s obvious, as if it’s simple, as if he’s placidly informing Roman about eel reproductive systems.

Everything is going in circles, and Roman with it. Over and over itself like a roller coaster, it twists and turns and drops away. His stomach in his shoes, his eyes streaming from the wind. Shit. He wants to get off. His heart is hammering clean through his chest, pushing wet and hot against the hand pressed against the outer shell of his ribcage. 

Why does he even  _ have _ a heartbeat?

“I’m going to fucking kill you,” Roman growls. He feels the words hit the air as if they had been emitted by a separate entity, someone yelling at him from across an empty field.

“Yes!” says Remus. “Yes.” He swings his legs down off of the back of the chair and uses the momentum to spring onto his feet. “ _ That’s _ what I’m talking about.”

Roman stares at him. “For old times’ sake?” he asks, slowly.

Remus beams. “Best two out of three?”

“I can get you in one,” Roman says, rolling his neck out so that the joints crack in quick, repeated succession. He frowns at Remus, pointing with an accusing finger. “No suit thing.”

Remus whines. “I  _ like _ the suit thing.”

“It’s unsportsmanlike!”

“It’s like getting vored by the interior of a car!”

“Take it off or I win by default!”

Remus lets out a tremendous, extended groan and flicks open a small flap on the left shoulder of the suit. He presses a little blue button, and with a whir of machinery, the suit peels back around his limbs, leaving him in a green buttoned-up jacket similar to Roman’s. A small keypad with an inlaid single button drops into the floor at his feet with a faint clatter. Remus picks it up and shoves it into his pocket.

“Goodbye, my darling,” he sighs, staring mournfully at his exclusively-human arms. “Maybe later I’ll make a new version with a mechanical dick.”

“I think that would be classified as a war crime,” Roman says, and rolls up his sleeves.

He always thought that the way Remus made sense to him was— some weird, instinctive Mindscape twin shit. But things are different here. The jolt of a kick to the gut, is brighter, realer, sharper. When Roman absently, without thinking, tries to pull a sword out of thin air, nothing appears and the lack of weight and momentum sends him momentarily stumbling.

And so, as Roman ducks out of reach of a punch half a millisecond before Remus starts to swing it, he comes to the horrible realization that maybe he just  _ knows _ his brother.

Remus takes a step back and lets Roman prowl around him in a slow, close circle. He’s grinning, hands his pockets, rocking back on his heels— He doesn’t even look on guard. It’s lilting, easy, like everything is easy for him. 

He’s ruthless and mean and awful and all these things that Roman doesn’t want to be but Roman is all those things too and the worst thing is that he’s not even properly good at it. He’s always thought, in those sick guilty moments, that for most people there is something other than the possibility of disapproval that keeps them from violence. 

But then again, most people are real. Maybe the rules ought to be different.

“You’re rusty,” Remus sing-songs. His smile is ever so bright, alight with a disconcertingly pure joy, like that of a small child at a rude joke.

“Oh, fuck you,” says Roman. “Next time, once I have my sword, I’ll—” He stops.

Remus spits blood onto the floor. Swipes his hand over his mouth, his shoe over the splatters on the ground. Smudges them into a long filmy line. When he speaks he doesn’t look at Roman. He says: “I think you should come back.”

Roman’s hands, drawn up into an instinctive half-formed fighting stance, lower. They hang, suspended, uncertain in front of him for a few more moments, before they drop down to his sides, fingers curling into the fabric of his trousers.

“I thought you’d be having fun,” Roman says, trying to keep his voice light. “Creative control, for once. They’ll finally need you.”

“It has been fun to get in on that whole metaphorical-emotional orgy deal you guys have going on,” Remus admits, manfully ignoring the jibe. “But… things are changing. We’re not— the same. Anymore. I can’t do your job. I can’t  _ be _ you.”

Roman doesn’t say anything. He thinks he might have forgotten how.

“I’m no good,” Remus says, taking a step closer to Roman. His voice could maybe be called gentle, if only from a relative standpoint.

Roman swallows. “That’s— That’s not true.”

Remus mulls it over. “Well,” he says, “Not without you, anyway,” and then he punches Roman in the jaw so hard he passes out.

* * *

The sky this evening is utterly uniform, with not a single cloud or star infringing upon the pale green-grey expanse stretching above. He can hear people talking behind him, in indistinct snatches, and the sound of footsteps pounding against the earth, rising in volume with every passing second. 

His name rings out through the cold, empty air, but he can’t make out any context for it, or what he’s doing here, or where ‘here’ is. He’s standing at the base of a hill, surrounded by dead trees. At the top, there is a silhouette of… something. Something large and dark and still, like an accidental blot of ink dripped onto a photograph. 

The sight of it makes the back of his neck prickle, so he looks down at himself instead. He’s wearing thick leather gloves and a quilted white jacket, which is covered in blood.

A warm, tremulous hand scrabbles at his shoulder, and he’s yanked backwards into a crush of bodies. Their wailing, desperate words surround him, like a series of crashing waves.

“Prince Roman—”

“—Saved us—”

“The Dragon Witch—”

“—Hero—”

There’s a figure crouched beside him, sobbing into the fabric of his cape. Hands on all sides. Faces. Voices. Somebody is bent over and frantically kissing his hand, their fingernails digging into his wrist like a vice. He reaches out, puts a hand on their shoulder and tries to gently push them up to a standing position.

“What’s your name,” he says, leaning in. They lift their head a little, but a draped black hood shields their face from view. Roman reaches out and peels it back and— His stomach rolls over. He stumbles backward, but the crowd is behind him now too, surrounding him, pinning him in place.

The person has no face. Beneath their hood is a flat, smooth sphere with papery skin pulled taut around it so thin it is almost translucent. The side that faces outward, closest to Roman, is slightly flattened and has almost inaudible dips pressed into it certain places, as if by a thumb into wet clay, but otherwise remains blank as a fresh page in a sketchbook. 

There are no eyes to follow him. No mouth to whisper his name in reverence or in anger. The words swirling around him are emitting from everywhere and nowhere, as if from a speaker with surround sound. Even over his thick jacket, he feels the person's grip burn against his arm like a handcuff made of dry ice.

“Excuse me,” says a high, clear voice, and the crowd parts, and it’s like— it’s as if Roman has been standing in the center of an empty room watching a movie, and for the very first time in thirty-one years, another person has just walked in. “Coming through. Move or I’ll have you killed.”

“Janus,” Roman breathes.

He strides down the path that has opened up for him, looking very pleased with himself. The slash rising upward from the side of his mouth makes his smirk infinitely more smug.

“Wow,” he says, coming to a stop in front of Roman. “You look like shit.”

“I think I— I think I killed something,” Roman tells him. “Except it wasn’t me.”

“That  _ is _ rather how things have been going lately,” Janus says. “Let’s get out of here. These things are terrifying.” He waves at the milling crowd. In perfect unison, they wave back.

Roman shudders. “Oh, god, yes.”

He stumbles mindlessly after Janus for an unknown distance-slash-time, keeping his eyes trained on the back black of Janus’ coat. They could be going anywhere. Janus could be leading him straight back home, right now, and Roman can’t muster the energy to care.

Janus comes to a stop. “Go on,” he says, expectantly, waving Roman through the doorway of a doorway of a small, dimly-lit pub. 

There’s no one there. A cheap imitation of an elegant chandelier dangles from the ceiling, alongside a couple sets of pennant flags strung up across the room. The tables and bar are a smooth, unblemished mahogany color. A cleaning rag has been abandoned, tossed over the back of one of the chairs. 

“Nice enough,” says Janus, wandering over to the bar. He swings a leg over it, hauls himself up, then drops down and out of view. Roman takes a seat on one of the stools, which has burgundy upholstery and creaks a lot under his weight. He presses his cheek to the cool, slightly sticky wood of the bar. To his left, Janus is doing something, clanking things about and muttering to himself, but Roman can’t see what. He’s so tired. He could probably go to sleep right here, if he tried. It smells kind of rustic, but also sweaty, almost like it’s real or something.

“Here,” says Janus, and a glass slides across the bar and hits Roman in the head. With a mildly disturbing squelching noise, he peels his face off of the wood and finds himself staring at an old-fashioned, complete with a garnish of an orange peel. 

“Thanks,” says Roman, bemused but oddly touched.

“Welcome.” Janus takes a sip of his own matching cocktail. “So. How have you been?”

Roman snorts. “Back to pleasantries, are we?”

“Just answer the damn question.”

“I’m positively marvelous,” says Roman. “Clearly.”

“Clearly.” Janus is leaning with his elbows on the bar, his face quiet and steady. It feels like it’s been years— lifetimes— since Roman last saw him. 

“This time... it was so—” Roman starts, a little unsteadily, then pauses to knock down about half of his glass in one gulp. It’s ice-cold and bitter and he overshot his swallowing capabilities a bit, but the jolt makes him feel a bit more human. “It was so  _ wrong _ . Like the people, they were… It wasn’t like that before.”

“It was,” says Janus, in a voice so gentle it is almost not his own. “We just didn’t notice.”

He sighs. “I guess not.”

They lapse into silence.

“I think,” Janus says, swirling the ice around in his glass with a rhythmic clink clink clink, “That I’ve gotten some things wrong.”

“Oh yes,” says Roman, perking up, “I’ve actually made a list.”

Janus grimaces. “Maybe we can save that one for later.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not going anywhere.”

“At least give me time to prepare a rebuttal.” He pops an ice cube into his mouth and swallows it whole, which is fucking terrifying. “So. The rest of us have talked some things over. Come to some conclusions.”

“What an exciting development,” Roman says. “We never used to be able to do that before. Wonder what’s changed. Oh, wait.”

Janus gracefully ignores him. “It’s not just things that you want,” he says, with the air of a ninth-grade debate kid laying down a thesis statement.

“Right.”

“It’s a story,” Janus tries. “That’s what Logan says. Is that it?”

“Kind of,” Roman concedes. He taps his fingers on the cold sloping side of his glass. “But more like... a life.”

“You  _ have _ a life,” says Janus, a little desperately.

“Not a real one.”  _ Not one I want. _

Janus doesn't have anything to say to that.

“I just couldn’t do it anymore,” Roman blurts and then he pauses. Freezes. Stares at the slowly-melting ice in his cup. When the world doesn’t immediately start falling apart, he goes on, choosily plucking out his words as if they are steps through a minefield. “Is that so wrong? I  _ can’t _ do it anymore.”

“You don’t have to,” Janus tells him. His voice is sharp and firm. It could make anybody believe anything. It has made Roman believe a lot of things. Some of them were even true. “We’ll… help. We’ll fix it. We’ll do better, all of us. It’ll  _ be _ better.”

Roman tips his head back towards the ceiling. It’s painted red. “Liar.”

“ _ No _ ,” Janus snaps. His mouth twists, jagged and unhappy. “I— No. I wouldn’t.” In one fluid motion, he peels off one of his gloves and slams his bare hand onto the surface of the bar right in front of Roman. The resounding  _ SMACK _ jolts him back to attention. 

“I won’t insult you by saying that everything will be perfect,” Janus says. “Or even that it will be good. But, Roman. I promise that we love you. And I promise that we’ll try.”

“Try to do  _ what _ ?”

“All of us have fucked up,” Janus says. “Quite a lot. In some rather innovative ways. But. Things are changing.”

“That’s what Remus said.”

“He was right, wasn’t he?” He doesn't smile, but it’s a near thing. “Look at us.” 

Roman presses his hands over his eyes until the multicolored shapes swimming around before him start to make him nauseous. He doesn’t  _ want _ to look at Janus.

“The rest of you aren’t the problem,” he says, the words tearing out of him like a page roughly ripped from a book, leaving a thin tattered edge still tucked in against the spine. 

He tried  _ so hard _ to change, to be new. He is not— he’s not a hero, or a prince, or an actor, or anybody’s husband. He is a remnant. He is stinging and raw, even after a hundred apologies, and too quiet to be properly considered himself. He is a hundred shards of glass wrapped loosely in a silk scarf. Pretty enough, but the closer he is held, the more hurt he inflicts.

“How—” Roman takes a shaky breath in, then out. “How can you expect me to wake up every day as the person that I am, and.” His voice cracks. “And be happy?”

“Oh.” Janus sounds startled. “Oh,  _ Roman _ .”

Roman makes a small, petulant sort of noise. At once there is a hand on his shoulder, warm and steady and  _ real _ .

“You were still you,” Janus says, so kindly, as if— as if that was good thing and not the entire fucking  _ issue _ . “In all the different versions of everything. It was you.”

“I know,” says Roman brokenly. “I  _ know _ that. Why would you—”

“It means that you have the  _ potential _ to be anything you want to be,” Janus says. It’s the same soft voice he used with Thomas after that disaster of the wedding. It’s the same voice he used with Roman during their awkward apologies, but Roman hadn’t realized it at the time.

“Those different selves weren’t perfect, or better,” he continues. “They’re just— How it would have been, if that’s how things were. They didn’t do anything you couldn’t do. Everything you liked about them is something that is true about  _ you _ . 

“We love you just as you are. But you’re allowed to change. To be different. You aren’t bound to some perfect idea of a self. You  _ are _ Thomas’ hero. But you don’t  _ have _ to be. Not all the time. And not if you don’t want to. You can just be  _ Roman _ .”

“I don’t know how,” Roman admits.

“I don’t know how to be Janus either,” Janus says. “It’s mostly improv.”

Roman chokes on a laugh. “I—” he starts. “I don’t…”

“That’s okay.”

They stay like that for a while. After what could have been a few minutes or a few hours, Roman starts to feel a little less actively shitty. He takes his hands off his eyes and discovers that they are no longer in the pub.

They are in Thomas’ kitchen.

“Sorry,” says Janus, looking not at all sorry. His cocktail has transformed into a CapriSun. He takes a long, slow, drag from it. “Oopsie-daisy.”

“I hate you,” Roman says blithely.

“Sorry,” Janus repeats, sounding only marginally more sincere. “But you couldn’t have stayed. Not really.”

A few universes ago Roman would have yelled and fought, perhaps even thrown a vase or two. Now, he just traces a circle onto the familiar grainy wood of the tabletop. There are faint pencil marks from Logan’s daily crossword puzzles. They are printed on thin gray paper that often sticks to the varnish and has to be peeled off.

“I could have,” he mutters. “If you didn’t come and… remind me.”

“Did you really think we wouldn’t go after you?” 

“I don’t know,” Roman says. “It’s not like I would have known if you didn’t.”

He pushes the chair back from the table and stands up, resting a hand against its top edge. It’s like he has just slotted himself back into place in the universe. His favorite mug is still on the shelf beside the fridge, just where he left it.

“Do you trust me?” Janus asks.

Roman looks at him, standing there in the kitchen in his stupid black coat and bowler hat. The lights in the room are all off, save for the one above the stove. Roman feels like they might be friends now, after it all, even though that’s sort of a silly thing to think. 

Technically, none of it was real. He knows that. But they both remember it, which makes it a  _ little _ real, and if what Janus said earlier was true, Roman supposes that means that the people that the two of them are have the potential to be… Friends. Monster-hunting partners. Okay with each other. Something along those lines.

“Yes,” says Roman. “I want to.”

Janus nods, once. “And I want to deserve it.”

“I think you already do.”

At that, Janus’ face seems to peel open. Soften. The stilted half-light makes his eyes look like they’re almost the same color. The tap in the sink is drip drip dripping into a scraped-out lasagna pan. Down the hall, there’s still a light glowing from beneath Virgil’s door.

“It felt like I was meeting you all over again,” Roman says. “Every single time.”

“Even now?” Janus asks.

“Especially now.”

“Well,” Janus says. “In that case.” He sticks out a hand. Roman stares at it for a moment, and then he starts laughing.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Janus intones, with great dignity, and Roman tries to play along but he can’t stop himself from grinning as he reaches out to meet Janus’ expectant hand in the air between them.

“The pleasure is all mine,” he says grandly. “I’m Roman.”

The handshake has aborted itself, morphed into something softer. Their clasped hands have dropped to waist-height, now, though they haven’t moved more than half a step closer to each other. It’s a bridge, of sorts. Pulled taut. It’s a bridge, and they are two stubborn, orbiting not-quite-people, and there are four closed doors, somewhere, in the hallway just beyond the kitchen, and four somebodies that Roman loves to love and— and there is a world. A real one, with all its laughter and anger and terrible air-sucking silences. 

The world that he ran away from. The world that he came back to.

Roman isn’t…. He’s not sure. Anymore. He’s not sure if it’s possible for a group of people to spend years hurting each other in a number of varied and exciting ways and end up alright, and together, and  _ happy _ .

Everything used to be so simple. It used to be that as long as you were good it would all be okay. But Roman isn’t good. Not completely. Not quite.

And they chased after him anyway.

Janus’ hand flickers from yellow-gloved to skin to back again and again and again, and then settles. There are little gleaming scales crawling down the backs of his knuckles. His hand is inhumanly cold. When he smiles, it fills the whole room. 

“I’m Janus,” he says.

“Janus,” Roman echoes. Somewhere far in the non-distance, at the very very edge of a universe that never was, a door clicks shut. “What a lovely name.”

THE END.


End file.
